Farewell Admiral Ackbar

Leah Culver, co-founder and developer of Pownce, blogged today about the demise of the peer to peer based social network. As an early adopter of the site, I am a little sad to see it go.

First off, Pownce is the only social network where I snagged my first name as my username. I am going to miss being just /neha! Other than that, I did really enjoy "Music Video Monday", "Desktop Thursday" and "Foto Friday." Pownce was a great tool to make friends on Flickr, and view and share all types of multimedia. I loved Pownce for all the cool things I was exposed to-- whether it was an exceptional rock climber with a hippie name, or a remixed version of "Man who Sold the World," one of my favorite Bowie tracks. Also, the community was really growing; I had over 1,000 friends & fans.

On the flipside, I can see why they may want to scratch this and start again. Six months ago, both Twitter and Pownce had their fair share of outages which enraged all of us. Twitter got on the ball, and the Fail Whale is now a relic. Conversely, I was frustrated with the amount of Admiral Ackbar I was seeing when logging on to Pownce. It worked well in the beginning, but it seemed the more people used it, the more /500 or /400 error messages I received. There was also is unexplainable white screen when I logged in that wouldn't go away unless I refreshed 3 times. I will not miss these knickknacks and hope the next product from the team will run smoother.

My last Pownce post (before the shut down announcement) was: "Who prefers Pownce over Twitter?" Most of the replies said both served different purposes. I would have to agree, but find myself not struggling with the 140 character limit as much as I used to on Twitter. Historically, I preferred Pownce, but because of all the bug errors I started using Twitter much more.

The last day of Pownce will be December 15 and there is a way to import all your notes into Wordpress, Vox or Typepad. I know that Leah will be a great addition to SixApart, and will create some social networking tool that is ever spiffier for all of us. And for all of you Powncers out there, there is always Twitter and Facebook. I know, it's not the same, but we'll have to wait for the next big thing. Goodbye Pownce and good luck Leah +team!